What's New (in the Desert)?

What’s New?

Isaiah 43:18-21

In September 2004, I went to Phoenix, Arizona for a youth ministry conference. I had never been to Arizona before that, but when I was there, every day the temperature was over 100°. We would walk on one side of the street on the way from the hotel to the conference center and on the other side on the way back, just so we could stay in the shade. The comedian Jeff Allen talked about the heat how people say, “It’s a dry heat – it doesn’t feel 118°. Now, it feels 290°! Run for it, kids, God has abandoned this place!”

There’s a reason the Bible continually references the desert as the place where God isn’t. At best, it is the place in between. At worst, it’s a place of testing.

Perhaps the defining moment in Jewish history is the Exodus – God delivering his people from slavery in Egypt. Sometimes memories can be a little deceiving; when the Israelites looked back at the Exodus, they focused on God’s power and deliverance. By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night. (Exodus 13:21) The actual event was a little less straightforward. God delivered them from slavery, but He did not lead them directly from Egypt into the Promised Land.

Pharaoh and the Egyptians began chasing them, and the Israelites became terrified and cried out, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?” (Exodus 14:11)

Have you ever found yourself in the desert? If you’ve never been there, it’s hard to describe. The desert saps your strength. Maybe you’ve gone through some stuff and now you’re just tired. You don’t have the energy to fight anymore. You’ve thought about giving up. Maybe you’re even too tired to give up. If you’ve ever felt like that, you’ve experienced the desert. Maybe you’ve even gotten to the point where you feel like God has abandoned you. In one of his recent surveys, George Barna reports that 1/3 of church attenders have never felt God’s presence in a congregational setting (http://www.barna.org/congregations-articles/556-what-people-experience-in-churches accessed 1/26/12). That means they have been in church, but they have never experienced God there.

I’m not saying that to shame anyone or to put down any churches, because it’s not necessarily anyone’s fault that you feel far from God. One of the difficult things is that someone who is going through a spiritual desert often feels shame because you know intellectually that God will never leave you nor forsake you, but it’s been a while since you really experienced God.

Listen to how Deuteronomy describes the time in the desert: Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you. (Deuteronomy 8:2-5).

I want you to notice a few things about the desert from this passage. First of all, the purpose of the desert: the words “humble” and “test” are probably not on most of our list of “things I’d like to have happen to me today.” Yet God uses the desert to humble his people and to test us, to know what is in our hearts. And what is in our hearts? Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that on its own the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? The last two weeks I have been stressing that we can teach our hearts to go another way, but that it takes a lot of work. God therefore tests us to know what is in our hearts, to see if we will keep his commands.

When it comes to God, there are no standardized tests. The things that test one person might not be a test for someone else. The test isn’t how you perform in church. It’s never about looking the part. I’ve heard integrity described as who you are when nobody is looking – most tests don’t come when everything is fine (actually, one important test comes when everything is going well; that is the “who gets the credit?” test).  Tests come when things are tough. How do you respond when you are angry or frustrated? What kind of language do you use?  How do you treat other people?

The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks. (Luke 6:45)

I have heard a lot about building character – if something is hard, it’s said it builds our character. But the desert doesn’t build character; it reveals it. Why would God allow us to go through times in the desert? Because he wants to reveal our character. So often we allow external circumstances and situations to cover our character. We feel an emptiness inside, so we eat. Or we shop. Or we have another drink. But that emptiness is there on purpose: to steer us toward God. It’s kind of like when we have a fever; our culture wants to dispense fever-reducing medicines immediately, but a fever is an indicator that something else is wrong. If all we do is treat the symptoms and never get to the underlying cause, we will never get well.

When we follow the symptoms to the root cause, it is a need for full and complete reliance on God for everything. The desert teaches us humility. Humility is recognizing our place – it never compares itself to other people; in the economy of the Kingdom, there is no such thing as one gift being better than others. Instead, humility is recognizing our role as submitted to the will of God and fully relying on God for everything. God fed the Israelites manna in the desert, not simply to feed them, but to teach them that He can be trusted for everything. What is it that you don’t trust God for?

There are many times when we find ourselves in the desert, and I have heard people vent a lot of anger against God. Where is God – why has God left me? But the Bible affirms something else about the desert – not only is it a place of testing, but it is a place ordained by God for that kind of testing. In fact, God was the one who led the Israelites in the desert and who took care of them for forty years.  And in the New Testament, we read that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil (Matthew 4:1).

It was the Holy Spirit who led Jesus into the desert to face temptation. Remember that God never tempts us; it is never God who dangles temptations in front of us. But God certainly allows temptations to exist, again, to test us, to discipline us, and to give us humility and to assure that we rely on Him for our every need.

I had to get to the purpose and existence of the desert to get to the scripture from Isaiah 43. “Forget the former things; do not dwell in the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.

In a time of testing, it can be easy to regress, to go backwards. Our view of the past is often colored by our perception and our memory is often selective. We talk about the good old days when everything was better. Was it really better? Even if it was, it doesn’t matter. Today is a new day – and to dwell in the past is to deny that God is doing something new.

Were the Israelites better off in Egyptian slavery? When they were wandering in the desert, they began to grumble against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” (Exodus 16:3)

All they did all day was sit around at the Golden Corral, eating and hanging out. Never mind the little issues like backbreaking labor and laws requiring the killing of Hebrew children. Sometimes we forget what really happened in the good old days. But even when the good old days were really good, we can never recreate them. Today is a new day, and God tells us to forget the former things. Why is that? Because when we simply focus on the past, we fail to perceive the new things that God might be doing in our midst.

God is doing a new thing, and it might not be where you expect it. God describes it as making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland, where you might least expect it. God has a tendency to do things like this – to do things in such a way that only He can get credit for it. God took Gideon, the weakest one of all, as the leader of Israel’s army. You can read about it in Judges 7, where The LORD said to Gideon, “You have too many men for me to deliver Midian into their hands. So in order that Israel wouldn’t boast against God that their own strength had saved them, God cut down the size of the army to 300 men. Thus God gets all the credit for the victory.

When God makes a way in the desert and provides streams in the wastelands, did you notice what the prophet says happens? The wild animals honor him. Jackals and owls are never presented positively in the Old Testament. They are animals who appear in desolate places. And they honor the God who makes their desolate places into paradise. It is God who does it, so that we, his people, will bring him praise.

Can you look at your circumstances and realize that God is making a way in the desert? Our church attendance has been down. Finances have been tight. And guess what: God is still here. Some of you have been going through tough times. And guess what: God is still here.

So God tells us to forget the old things and to open our eyes to see the new things he is doing and to bring him praise and glory!